


Synaesthesia

by deadlybride



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: (but it's not creepy), Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Angst, Molly POV, Superpowers, a minor sort of witnesses a sexual act between adults
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:03:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1516622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Although Molly loves Mrs. Suresh, and India is a new, strange, and fascinating place in which to explore and live, sometimes she misses her old life.</p>
<p>(Originally posted on LJ.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Synaesthesia

Although Molly loves Mrs. Suresh, and India is a new, strange, and fascinating place in which to explore and live, sometimes she misses her old life.

Not the life she lived in Los Angeles, not the one with her first parents. That, she tries not to overthink, dismissing it as an old, happy dream. It is a dream of soft warmth and light in a city wrapped in sunshine. There's a suggestion of first grade, the smell of wax, whole wheat pancakes in the morning, and it's nice to sink into the memory of that, the sensory pleasure of it. She does not think about the dream's ending.

Instead, when she sits cross-legged on the wide bed in the bright, cool room Mrs. Suresh provided, she thinks back to the life she has adopted as her own. It was too short, too full of fear and uncertainty, but there are things she loved about it.

She remembers the solid comfort of Matt, her very first hero. He seemed so strong when he was moving boxes into the apartment, the big muscles in his arms flexing underneath the soft disguise of his skin. She remembers the sense of pure safety born from how he always knew exactly where she was. He would come home from work at the precinct and head unerringly for the kitchen, or the study, or the little bedroom they shared, and he always had a big smile for her, no matter the day he'd had.

She remembers Mohinder – remembers the first time she saw him, in the nice lab Mr. Thompson had set up, spattered with bruises and looking so uncertain. But he saved her life anyway, no matter how scared he was, and she loved him for it. He wasn't as strong as Matt, or as capable, but he swung her up in his arms and did his very best to protect her from any monster. Even though he was gone so often on business trips, he called her almost every day, and the funny British tilt to his voice never failed to calm her, no matter the dreams she'd been having.

Other faces from her life in New York rear up, sometimes. She remembers Niki and Micah and DL, the little family that loved each other so much they were willing to kill to keep together. They would have been scary if Niki didn't always seem so sad, or Micah so hopeful. She remembers playing with him in the kids' waiting room at the hospital and feeling okay, just because he was so sure everything would be all right.

She remembers Maya, too. They only knew each other for a few days, but Molly remembers the warm arepitas Maya made, moving about Mohinder's kitchen with quick, sure movements. Mohinder had been too exhausted to cook. She remembers how tightly Maya held her hand the day before she went to the airport, both of them scared but too nervous to talk about it.

Thinking of Maya is dangerous, though. Molly has to screw up her nerve every time, because the memory is entwined and inseparable from something dark, something so frightening it sends her back to the blackest of nightmares.

Despite Mrs. Suresh's warm comforts, she knows that she will probably never go back. So, sometimes, she lays back on that big bed and closes her eyes, and concentrates. Even after everything that has happened, she has never been afraid of her ability. It does not define her, for good or for ill, and even if she has to hide she will not hide from herself.

So she curls her fingers around brightly dyed blankets and watches her friends. Rifling through the populations of the world has always been so easy, and even easier when she  _knows_  what she's looking for.

She zigzags through Los Angeles, passing hundreds of thousands of dark bodies without pause until the hot spark of Matt's essence flashes through her mind. Lately, he's holding a baby boy, with a grin on his face so open and happy that she laughs out loud. Sometimes he's with his wife, a lady who often seems sad, to Molly, though when she and Matt and the baby are all together that sadness seems to leave, at least temporarily. He never seems to be at work, which makes Molly worry that maybe someone discovered his abilities, but at least he seems to be safe. Sometimes, if he's by himself and it's very late, he seems so lost or angry Molly almost wrenches away, but – she reminds herself that this is Matt, and no matter how angry he gets he will always find a way to get better.

When Molly used to look for Niki, she was never sure what she'd find. Sometimes it was the same sad lady she met that frightening night in New York, but not always. As she combed through the area surrounding Las Vegas, it was a challenge to differentiate the different shades Niki could be. When she was herself, she was a cool blue flicker of mint, and Molly could watch her with easy curiosity. Then she would just cook, or talk with Micah, or curl up with DL on their bed, and everything was fine. Sometimes, though, that blue would burn bright gold, and the taste of mint would turn to something hot and unpleasant in Molly's mouth, and that's how Molly knew it was Jessica. More often than not, Molly would pull away, because usually it was best not to know what Jessica got up to. There was a reason things like that were kept in movies for grown-ups. Occasionally, though, Jessica would just… be. Molly would watch her move around Las Vegas, head arrogantly high and fingers relaxed against the wheel of her red convertible, and she would sometimes envy that strength, no matter at what price it came.

She used to look for Mohinder most of all. Even on the plane to India, only hours after she'd last seen him, she closed her eyes and shut away the annoying hum of the turbines, the Disney movie the stewardess had provided, and reached out to him. No matter how far away he got, Mohinder would always be amber and cinnamon to her, the smell of warm chai, the delicate touch of combed cotton under her hand. He'd had tears in his eyes as he drove away from the airport and she'd wanted to cry, too, but it would only have made the people on the plane pitying and nervous, and she could be stronger than that.

When he started to change, she worried intensely for him. He was almost as strong as Niki (or Jessica), as certain as Mr. Thompson had been – but that wasn't right. It wasn't Mohinder. She had been in India only a week, still watching him every night after Mrs. Suresh put her to bed, and she could  _see_  how everything went wrong. She became afraid to look, no matter how much she needed him, because she had lost a set of parents already and she didn't think she could bear it if it she watched Mohinder die.

She tried to live a life in India. Mr. Suresh's library was enormous and packed with books on all kinds of subjects. Most of them are too advanced for her, though. Mrs. Suresh showed Molly the little section Mohinder carved out when he was young, and those were easier, though she still struggled with some of the bigger words. She did her schoolwork dutifully, and tried to learn as much Tamil as she could, because she wanted to play with other kids, to make friends. She knew that was what Mohinder had wanted for her – a life as normal as it could possibly be, a world away from home.

Eventually, though, the urge to look became too great. She had worried for Mohinder so long it was almost like a skin, something she lived inside and hardly even noticed anymore. When she closed her eyes, the billion souls of India flooded up around her, but even with disuse it was still so easy. She was in New York in a second; at a strange building in two; and at three that warm cinnamon filtered into her nose and she took a deep breath, almost crying, because there he was. Whole, healthy, safe in his lab. He was still strong – no one should be able to lift a whole table to pick up a lost eyedropper – but the glint in his eye had mellowed to cool science, not rage or fear, and the little smile as he peered into his microscope was natural and purely  _Mohinder_. He was back.

She picked up the habit of watching him, as she did the rest of her friends. He lived in his lab, it seemed, and had started driving a taxi to pay the rent. His life seemed safe, and normal – until she saw something she had never, ever expected.

Sylar had never been fixed in her mind, and always took longer to find than anyone else. Sometimes, like when he'd come to Mr. Thompson's building in New York, he was cold black metal, flat and tasteless. Sometimes he was scratchy, like rough gray wool – that was how he'd seemed when he had come to Mohinder for help, when he'd tricked Maya and almost killed her.

When Molly found him with Mohinder, the familiar soft amber was surrounded by springy, bitter-tasting green. She gasped out loud. There was the boogieman, the monster from so many bad dreams, sitting at a table across from Mohinder. They seemed to be talking – just talking, as though nothing was wrong. Mohinder was clutching a set of keys in his hand, but though he looked a little scared he wasn't running away. Molly knew he was strong enough to hurt Sylar, to make him go away, but – he wasn't. He  _wasn't_ , and why did Sylar seem so sad? His hair was longer than she remembered, and he was dressed simply: jeans, and a black coat, and tennis shoes. He didn't seem so scary.

When he reached his hand out, across the table, Mohinder took it after only a second's hesitation. Sylar melted from bitter green to sad, sour blue, and Molly wished more than anything, suddenly, that she could hear what she could see. Because there was no explanation for the way Sylar and Mohinder stood up, synchronized like they'd done it a dozen times, and stepped close to each other, and looked into each other's eyes. And Molly couldn't understand when Mohinder – her best, brightest hope, her smooth curl of cinnamon and softness – she couldn't understand why he would tilt his head up and let Sylar kiss him.

She opened her eyes to India and Mrs. Suresh leaning over the bed, asking in worried, motherly tones what was wrong, why she was crying, what had happened, darling? Saying it was just a dream. Molly let herself be hugged and rocked, eyes wide open, but it wasn't a dream. It wasn't.

She visited Matt, then. He'd met a tiny blonde girl (sunshine yellow, lemon drops) who he seemed to love. She visited Micah, who'd lost both Niki and DL, who'd built up a life of circuitry and electricity, who seemed a little harder every day.

She drew pictures of the Taj Mahal and of Egyptian pyramids, of an orange staircase to nowhere and of the Pacific Ocean. She struggled with multiplication. She learned how to say  _goodbye_  and  _I'm sorry_  and  _I love you_  in Tamil and Hindi, and she learned about the principle of reincarnation – how a person's life can be so small, and how the soul can try over and over to get things right, to try to reach Nirvana.

Finally, she sat cross-legged on her bed once more, alone. It was almost noon in India, which meant it was very late in New York City. The mellow burnt orange of Mrs. Suresh was napping in the room at the end of the hall, and Molly took a deep breath, laying her head on the pillow.

This time Sylar felt jagged, like a broken shell, in shades of purple and yellow-green and ugly, painful red. Mohinder's warmth spread over and around him as Molly came into the lab and saw them under the blanket on the old bed in the corner, naked shoulders gleaming brown and pale white in the lamplight. Snow was falling outside the windows and Mohinder was shivering as he moved up, settling on top of Sylar. The look on his face was sad, and whatever he said made Sylar close his eyes, turning his face away. Mohinder gathered the blanket and drew it over his shoulders, hiding their bodies from view as he started to move up and down, rocking slowly. Sylar opened his eyes, and they were huge and dark, glittering with something Molly didn't understand. He reached up a big hand, touching the side of Mohinder's face – and all of a sudden they changed, both of them. Molly's hands clenched into the blanket, her eyes still shut tight, as Sylar became gray-white-silver and Mohinder's warm cinnamon flooded bright into her mouth, lingering with orange and honey, a bitter tang and the sensation of liquid heat running across her palm. Mohinder threw his head back, his eyes closed, and Sylar sat up, wrapping slender arms around Mohinder's back, burying his face into the middle of his chest. Molly couldn't hear, but it seemed almost as though they were crying without tears – long, hard breaths, as Mohinder looked back down and took Sylar's face between his hands, their eyes bright and sad, cool iron, gray and gray.

The next time she looks, Sylar is gone. Mohinder has returned to his familiar taste and color and smell, the reassuring softness she remembers. Their lives are changing too much, too much for even Molly to keep track. Sometimes Mohinder is with Peter, or Mr. Petrelli, or sometimes he's with Mr. Bennet, who is still so scary, even when he's doing what's right. Mohinder sleeps by himself, wherever he can find a bed, and though he's always amber and chai sometimes he sharpens with a tang of honey-orange, or chilly gray, and Molly knows he's thinking of Sylar.  
  
She looks for him, now. She couldn't before, because the memory was too black, too dark, too dangerous to want to see again. And there are parts to him that will always be cold and black, or scratchy with the smell of death, but sometimes she can see him walking down a street in a town she doesn't recognize and he will be warm, like almonds. Sometimes he will be watching someone, and there will be a whiff of cinnamon and ashes, and he will mellow to gray-blue, and he will be so sad she can feel sorry for him.  
  
Mrs. Suresh seems happy to take care of her and Molly is grateful. She has grown to love the taste of dal and curry, spice tempered by the sweetness of coconut milk. She learns to say  _you're welcome_  and  _home_  and  _I forgive you_. She has moved on to long division. Memories are something she has learned to set aside; things she knows and accepts, but doesn't need to examine every day. She has begun to think that, someday, she can go back to America, that she can find Mohinder or Matt and make yet another new life. Her old life is something she misses and will always cherish, but when she closes her eyes now she can see whole worlds being remade.   
  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't re-write this at all before posting it here; hopefully it isn't embarrassing.


End file.
